AAAAAaaaffect affect AFFECT AFFect aFFeeeeekt

Piu piu bao bao bang whhiiipp whiiiip hey how was your day, how's it going, have you just entered into inflectional smalltalkin niceties with me, I'll whip you up and spit you up your nostrils/mouth/anus.

"Hellooooooo honey, I'm ho-oooome!"

The past month has been about negotiating categories (homosexual, pervert, intellectual, anarchist), critiques (the repressive hypothesis, sentimentality), and practices (veganism primarily). About wetness, scheduling, anxiety making and unmaking. Feeling confident and over-powerful despite my farts. Moving too frequently from one room to another.

I don't want to take more than I can give back, but find it too easy when whirlpooled in this hauschoolcommunity, these meteor vectors of spray paint music resistance spectacle lo-ooove, in short creativity. How do I permanently plant my ass in a place of agency? The paralysis and pleasure of analysis is too easy, too much, too soon (again I am quoting Foucault here; my ideas are his ideas were probably someone else's ideas). In the rehearsal room, I want to shut off everyone's brains and use our bodily impulses (I want to be new age, I want to talk about auras), but am entrenched in a weird dilemma between the politics of BDSM and the collective fantasy of my first year actor's rosy virginal buds.

I want everyone to wrestle and enjoy it.

......Foucault whispers 'tsk tsk' when I talk about my desires. Nevertheless, I commence a process of self-reflection.

Question #1: Why do I want to write about a substance (shit) that I am so physically disgusted by?

a) Shit functions in my unconscious as a symbolic displacement of male genitalia.

b) My inherited privilege has deprived of an identity-making traumatic experience, and so I seek to create a site of discomfort in the space of my greatest comfort and confidence, academia.

c) I have a potty mouth.

d) I want to terrify and radicalize institutional spaces (i.e. a BA thesis).

e) All of the above.

This is a collective and democratic process of self-reflection. I welcome your votes.

Thank you and good night,

general saber stambam reporting to base in re: this our war of BaoHaus v sadness and badness and robots (what a noble cause!). troops mobilizing, guerrillas formulating and snipers adjusting sniper rifle enemyfinders here at ground zero, chicago il USA in my brain. battle commencing: saber v body. we find body to be source of badness, possibly robots. situation: contact with physical matter. usually hard, often inanimate. effect: lesions. pus. blood. contusions. fluids amassing and masses afluiding. major causes: unfamiliarity w/ territory. inhabitants of landmass: BODY, despite length of occupancy and repeated attempts to make nice w/ locals, find terrain alien and unkind. here we have your typical case of colonizer v natives. reportage of consistent attempts to sabotage settlers. methods: trippery, intentional distortion of depth perception, miscalculation of distance and objects between points A and B. repeated racquetballery. constant scratchery/mr. cattery. consumption of Sinful Consumptibles prove to SABOTAGE ATTEMPTS of PEACEMAKERY. we must mobilize NOW.
tactics: 1. trickery. catch enemy at own game. mutilate us, we mutilate you! details: intentional buttonery, occasional haircuttery, ear piercingization. advocate bodmoddery! 2. love your enemy as you love yourself! acceptance of The Bruise as a work of art. what beautiful colors can YOUR body sport, all at once?! danger: tendency towards desire to self-inflict. desire averted, with help of weapon: PAIN. 3. learn to think like your enemy. grassroots community outreach! seeking volunteers. education and health awareness positions available! program: declumsify. walk straight lines! stand straight, ride bike sans falling. eradicate Spontaneous Bite-the-Dustery! 4. INTRODUCE SOFTNESS TO LIFESTYLE. REMOVE HARD TANGIBILITY. REPLACE WITH FOAM AND COTTON BALLS.

current location: hot on tail of enemy. close, on top of, inside of but not a part of. this is hard. enemy: BODY is both tricky and boring. am considering abandonment for More Interesting Foes.

general saber stambam over and out.

The Electric Applesauce Acid Test

I sit in my most dissatisfying class and

suddenly,

in a fit of insatiable yearning, my belly, devoid of all traces of egg or flesh, releases a wolfchild growl, the bellowing bao of a four hour famine.  I plan to satisfy my churning cavity's craving with a cup of applesauce perched enticingly on the edge of my desk.  I peel back the aluminum covering with a slow, satisfying process akin to the shedding of human skin and

POP!

a blob of applesauce sails into the air like a revolutionary cry and plops

PLOP!

into a perfect heap in the center of my notebook.  My fellow classmates abandon bored expressions to release fits of laughter

and I, bespeckled with the mass-produced mash of Johnny Appleseed's contribution to the American landscape, can only stare stupidly and grin like a chesire cat with freshly-shaven fur.  Applesauce dries on my T-shirt in a most suspicious fashion.  I do not wash.  This public display of forged debauchery keeps me wildly amused for the rest of the day as I stumble through lectures of molecules and epidemics, cups of coffee I swore I would renounce.

I need to stay awake somehow.

anger management

I, leli mcsquid, have an anger problem.
it all started one bright january day when I was born.
it's been 21.76 years now, and I feel that I've made very little progress.
don't get me wrong - other things have progressed. for instance:
I'm not afraid of water any more.

but still
I'm angry.
wait
too soffffffffft (ft ft ft) -
I seethe, teethe, seethe with
livid, white hot rage

but how can I
little me (i)
encapsulate the pain and hate
that burns inside
at the slightest provocation?
I'll put it to you like this. I hate that I hate. I'm angry that I'm angry. the fact of modern man's suckitude is what makes modern man suck. and not in a fun way, either. it's a vicious circle, but don't bring any british army men into this. they were having a lot of fun. except the part when the guy's head got chopped off by the propeller plane. that was just sad.
(but a little funny) -
we'll call it catch 69, cuz it sucks all the time.

My life is the empty set.

SCRIBBLERS IN THE LIBRARY WILL TELL YOU THAT LIFE IS THE EMPTY SET. DO NOT BELIEVE THESE CHARLATANS.

Your life is all reals - a ring of candy wrappers, ash, abandoned castanets, unrecognizable late nights, stolen and donated pages, text messages, sideward glances, encrusted dishes, unintentional monolouging, space rides through wormholes, howling, remixes of remixes (i.e. f(g(x))) and things that are sometimes so nice it makes you a little sad. Your life includes the damnable SQUARE ROOT OF TWO.

STAND UP TO THESE LIARS.

Tell them - identities I'll take, but you can keep your inverses because I don't believe in Opposites. I don't need to be added to or multiplied by to get some other set of numbers. Especially not if those numbers are air conditioning, ties, the Sunday New York Times, cosmetic dentistry, Lysol, pre-distressed clothes, flags fluttering, or that sourpuss expression you've got on your face. I SIMPLY DO NOT WANT WHAT YOU ARE SELLING. YOU CAN SELL IT AS HARD AS YOU LIKE, BUT I AM NOT BUYING. I'm not even in the market for what you've got.

Tell them you've got everything you need in your little ring, then chew up the advertisements they've shoved into your hands and spit them back on their faces.

Mixed Metaphors

Whether it's quiet whisperings slipping through my door, the riot of an electric guitar, or a feline squabble, the BaoHaus is always full of noise and life, crescendoing sometimes then falling away to a hum of machines and light breathing.

I am constantly thrilled and overwhelmed by the vibrancy of our lives. Even in the quieter hours, the house is only a squid at rest, perhaps hidden in the murk of the deep sea, but eyes half closed, muscles taut, ready to pounce when the right fish comes swimming along, swaying its shiny seductive scales into reach. It is a living place in its own right, growing as we grow, each room an organ with purpose, each interaction a catalyst, powered by the trotting of both human and cat.

I'm not certain where I'm going with such a metaphor, but when I think of all the globules of fat stored away here for when we need that extra energy boost, and the flow and exchange of liquids, I know that this is more than just a house, it is our home, and it is beautiful. And I am so glad it isn't fucking freezing either.

Sunday Mourning

Some random thoughts:

I went to a punk show and I wore my most punk clothes - to share in the spirit, ostensibly. But now I realize that the reason almost everybody there looked the same was that they all wanted to share in the spirit. They all wanted to believe. An exercise to the reader: why is this a problem?

I used to think nature was groovy wavy smooth in a way that computers could never become. Last night I decided that anything becomes digital on a small enough scale. And only now I've realized that all patterns are new and old, wave and particle, cynical and not.

i love and appreciate all of you and all of this!

a joint-op operation

Leli does not want to watch tv...

said the hermit crab in a moment of lucid brilliance. 

Take me home! no, wait-

Cries of "free, free Palestine" mingle with hippie jam bands whining through weak speakers.  The question is, what's weaker here?  The speakers or the coffee.  I think it's the the nylons ridden with runs that wrap around Malic's ribcage, girl parts bursting forth.  Almost.  Not quite.  Leli knows that Malic is a boy now. 

It pours in rains and torrents of droves like pidgeons sitting-toed all in 1 well-tended & perma-coifed row.

it covers the sky but not the bird cry or the rip, rip, ripping of a nylon lie-

Leli ran into Terrence today. If Leli were as jacked on sugar as Terrence, maybe he, too could put on a 3-minute performance in the Reynold's club lobby consisting of nothing but coughing, coughing, and more coughing, 

"Ack! hhhg ick ahchem ack ack kcha hrrrrg rrrr ack ack ack!"

He put ten packets of sugar into two cups of coffee and swallowed it down in two gulps. Leli watched in horror as the sugar swam, from his throat to his stomach, from his stomach to his blood, from his blood to his head, from his head to his eyes, darting out of his face - and his eyes to his hands -

PAKOW! they explode into space.

He escaped lecture today by playing sick.  The boy who cried wolf . Leli says that Malic seems disillusioned.

Our lives are disjunctional.  We are consuming, consuming.  Yet we reject coffee and blocks of bison meat with ease.  Perhaps we can eliminate one by one--the flesh, the dairy, the smoke that slithers--until we purify into a poof (PAKOW!) of everything and nothing.  Like snakes eating their tails.

"It's hard to hang out and not consume.  We consume each other," Rolly says.

Wise words from sequined squid.

snippets of tuesday

i wake early to attempt to gather myself.
it has rained over night
the trunk of the palm outside my window is dark
it is nearly 8
and the city has not quite woken up, soon the honks of scooters
motorcycles rickshaws trucks cars and buses will fill the air.
a child yells,
hammers strike unnamable somethings

i lean out
to smell the morning air and i recoil
this city smells
of exhaust, of processed food rotting in its packaging, soaked in
dog's urine, chewed on by goats and cows, rotting again in their
stomachs.
there are so many lives in this space, (massive banyon&mimosa trees
emerge from every patch of dry earth, green everywhere)
but i see little happiness.
except in the faces of the girls at the school where i go to play.

i saw two dead dogs yesterday. the first time i've seen that. lying on
their backs in the sunlit gutter, stinking, i wonder when they will
disappear.
also yesterday alex (a friend) asked somewhat facetiously where the
mystical india was that he came to find himself in. i said not in the
cities, hannah says i dont believe in finding myself.

i fasted yesterday, and was tired in the morning, but pepped up when
necessary. a good exercise for every month, maybe more. i am thinking, gathering words about the body, ascetism, renunciation, liberation, immortality, devotion, god, the everything. reading the upanishads (beautiful text) and bhagavad gita (krishna is an asshole).
this weekend is diwali. our class scatters for week-long breaks. i go
solo to delhi and the himalayas.

"what do you do when life can't always be beautiful?" writes alonso from cusco, high high in the andes. 

p.s. dunno why the formatting/line breaks are funky. we'll deal.

INVASION!

NEIGHBORING ROBOTS BE WARE:

HUMAN DETRITUS HAS ESCAPED!

This detritus rumored to resemble human burden, category: HAIR.

Do not underestimate.
This detritus may harbor sentiments of exodus and revolution in its newly removed fibers. It may creep under your door and into your personal living space. It may inhabit your kitchen. It may travel SOUP-bound into your uniquely guarded YOGURT. It may weave political conspiracy and shelter your non-humanoid kitchen scavenger resident.

Gremlin inspired, it may assault your MACHINERY. Pay close attention to your bicycles of HIGH aesthetic value! Particularly prone to seek well-MAINtained&weakly equipped&socially ADORED detritus-JAMMING-prone bicycles. It may entwine into your non-gears and cause immediate mechanical FAILURE.

Detritus rumored to harbor sympathies towards CONSERVATION. It may turn out the lights you leave on when you manifest childhood human psychological lingerings. It may warp your craigslist habits and produce search results of UNACCEPTABLE quality. IT MAY: Lower the water pressure of your sinks when you make DINNER.

IT MAY: Form big SMALL detritus trolls who EAT messily and OFTEN. SEAL your starch products with special ATTention. big SMALL trolls prone to seek starchES.
IT MAY: Have big SMALL detritus DANCE PARTIES in the pores of your DEodorant, hollow out big SMALL detritus homes and plant fragrant misty flower gardens.


NOTE: Little HARD FACTS about the DETRITUS are clear at this time. Robots in nearby quarters be on HIGH alert.

bwooop.

coming back

Too long since I've posted.  Never too late slip back into blogging with a forgotten rant and current craving:

October 1

On the red line again, throat aching beneath the collar of my purple and white striped shirt, shoulders tense beneath red suspenders.  I disguise my queercircusfreak aesthetic with a hoody and a leather jacket.  No one fucks with me on the el tonight.  I question the ethics of invisibility (only for a moment).

Everyone is sick.  I have the chills.  Even my toes can feel the cold through cracked Converse.  I need new shoes for winter.  But I will let snow collect beneath calloused heels for that extra two dollars and twenty five cents to carry me north again. 

And again and again.  Slow, slippery summer has hardened into something more viable.  I don't know if I like this routine, this jerking back and forth on a red line leash.  Time divided by crisis, by location, by too many cups of coffee. 

Part of me wants to go home, take a quarter off, curl up in bed and travel from the library to the coffee shop and back again.  Routine and simple.  Serving drinks to papa on Thanksgiving, singing for supper on Christmas day, grandmother's request.  Order, ordinary.

I remember my eight-year-old Christmas, the year I wore that ribbed sweater with the blue and orange stripes, the one that stuck to my skeletal frame and gave me awkward, elvin breasts.  I thought I looked so mature, glitter dust smudged in a purple haze on freckled cheeks.  I’m loud and boisterous in those family videos, singing radio songs I was too young to understand.  My mother wants that version of me to emerge from the mouth of the city that ate me.

For all she knows it was this city that scraped the girl out of my skin, poured stale cigarettes into precious lungs and wildness into bones.  But The How and The Why don't matter here and the Ordinary is out of the question.

October 13

So I will ride the red line again and wait for early summer to pull me back, back to a house full of condoms and cats, back to metal through skin through winding highways and conversations, back to endtables and an imposing block of bison meat.  I will dance and desolidify.  I will play my songs on nylon strings.  I will curl up in paper nests of radical thought, thaw and let liquid dreams tangle in tentacles.

Situation Normal All Fucked Up

Today is dreaming in my stockings, too hungover to do much more brain work than absorbing so fuck thinking and producing, cold cold cold, quiet up in the bell tower, clanging ringing of my shoes on the floor, feeling like the Hologram Museum lady opening doors with my oversized key, and food tasting like it's maybe a joke that's being played on me by the world.

It's been a weird fucking week. Two weeks ago, I thought I had scrabbled together the foundations of some personal aphorisms, but the past five days or so have proved me wrong. I can feel how unsettled everyone and everything feels. Like right now, my nerves are dampened by the dull sheen of an affected brain but still I can feel the the blood drawing away from my fingertips and my toes, receding ever backwards to my heart. It makes me want to set up a nest of blankets and tossed aside scarves wherever I go, so I can keep warm and retreat whenever I need to. Almost as if, I have in some instinctive way decided to be a nomad now that the times have sprung upon me.

That sounds maudlin. I don't mean it to be. Things are changing, which is fine, just a little sooner than I had hoped or expected. Maybe I have to work on not worrying about permanence. For so many years of my life, everything was always the same. I think sometimes I want to hang on to that, as repulsive as it often was to me. It might be time to let go of that need. I wonder what that would do.

Do you have a sense of permanence in your life? Or an attitude towards transience and temporariness?

P.S. The Renaissance Society kitchen is a wonder to behold. There are so many bottles of Pellegrino water.

overheard at the baohaus

"i definitely dreamed last night that ethan was weeping in the bathroom."

...

"wow, this is going to take a long time to get back to america. we kept seeing people on houseboats. this feels really uncool."

"should i stop?"

"it feels unpleasant to my ears."

...

"your butt is different."

"your butthair is different? it totally is though. different colors, different shapes, different sizes...it's okay, though. we can still be buddies."

...

"what an idiot. baby, you like fire? you like fire?'

...

"it'll probably be like me manhandling a little bit and her manhandling a little bit...and between that, we'll be fine."

quick shout out to my baohaus buds far and wide. i want to share with you lovely people clips from a performance piece my boss from this past summer is developing.

http://fridaythang.com/trans-form/Videos.html

from the moment i walked into her apartment and saw an actual arcade machine hooked up to play every game in the arcade universe i knew she was awesome, but i'd never seen her work. the story she tells in the first piece is one she told me the day it happened, and wow i love her storytelling. let me know if you want to come see her perform the finished piece come mid-december, cats. i will be there fore shore.